END HUNGER

Pope Francis, Shepherd of Truth

"HOPES OF MILLIONS"

The annual celebration of World Food Day emphasizes ... the needs, yearnings and hopes of millions of persons who lack bread each day. Increasingly, there are more people who sadly make up part of that great number of human beings who have nothing, or almost nothing to eat. It should be the opposite and yet recent statistics are a painful proof of how international solidarity appears to be cooling.

"EFFECTIVE HELP"

The poor expect from us an effective help that takes them out of their misery... In this twenty-first century that has seen considerable advances in the field of technology, science, communications and infrastructure, we ought to feel shame for not having achieved the same advances in humanity and solidarity, and so satisfy the primary needs of the most disadvantaged.

"WE MUST DO BETTER"

We are all called to go further. We can and we must do better for the helpless. We must move to concrete action, so that the scourge of hunger disappears completely.

WE CAN DO IT

We do indeed have the adequate means and framework so that beautiful words and good wishes may become an action plan of substance that leads effectively to the eradication of hunger in our world. To this end we need joint efforts, upright hearts, and persistent concern to firmly and resolutely make the other's problems one's own.

"LACK OF POLITICAL WILL"

There is a fundamental lack of political will. What is needed is the willingness to end hunger, and this ultimately will not happen without a moral conviction that is shared by all peoples and all religious persuasions, where the integral good of the person is at the heart of all initiatives and consists in "doing to another what we would want done to ourselves."

DON'T BE INDIFFERENT

... These are some reflections I wish to share with those men and women who do not allow themselves to succumb to indifference; who hear the cry of those who do not have the minimum needed to lead a dignified life.

THE CHURCH AND THE POOR

For her part, the Catholic Church, in the exercise of the mission with which her divine Founder has entrusted her, struggles daily throughout the world against hunger and malnutrition in multiple ways and through her various structures and associations, remembering that those who suffer from misery are not different from us. They share our flesh and blood. They deserve ... a friendly hand to help and support them, in such a way that no one is left behind, so that in our world fraternal solidarity may boast its own identity card and citizenship, beyond any flashy slogans void of substance.